


Hallow's Eve

by LadyLampblack



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Game)
Genre: Actual glowing benches, Candy Collection, Fluff without Plot, Gen, Ghost is assumed to be human, Halloween, and irene is rightly worried tbh, ghost is a feral bug baby, kelly is dressed up like a little bee, mute knight, no plot necessary to read, short but sweet, stinky bug baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-17
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-10-20 06:23:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20670776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyLampblack/pseuds/LadyLampblack
Summary: A wandering little Knight gets lost and stumbles on an odd civilization and an odd tradition.  And maybe they make a friend along the way.





	Hallow's Eve

There's a new kid in town tonight, Kelly notices. Empty mask of a face, dressed in a cape made of what looks like bug wings and a black bodysuit, a weird-looking sword on their back. The air near them smells like squashed flies, but there's a real sense of serenity to them despite that.

She's almost jealous.

She pulls herself up onto the bus stop bench next to the new kid, and she thinks they look at her as she straightens her black and yellow tutu. "Hi there!" she greets. "I like your costume!"

The new kid definitely tilts their head at her curiously.

"How much candy have you gotten? You must'a gotten a lot 'cause you dressed up all good." She thinks she's confused the kid, and she looks them over again. "Where's your candy bucket? Don'cha know it's Halloween?"

No answer.

Kelly puffs her cheeks in determination and slides off the bench. She knows her mom always carries a spare bucket! She tugs on her mom's skirt. "Hey, Mom?"

"Yes, Kelly?"

Kelly points at the new kid. "They don't got a candy bucket. Can I give them the spare one?"

Her mom gives her a wry smile. "You aren't going to use it yourself, are you?"

Kelly shakes her head, and her mom hands the black-and-white bucket over. She skips over to the new kid and pushes it onto the bench next to them. "Here you go! Now you can collect candy!"

The new kid stares at her blankly before pulling something out of their cape and dropping it in her bucket. She looks in, and it looks like they dropped a few clusters of shiny rocks among the candy. She picks up a cluster. "Oh, that's cool! Where'd you find this?"

They shrug and start dropping more of the little rock clusters into their own bucket.

"No, no, silly! You gotta use it for candy!" Kelly instructs, and the new kid stares at her again, head cocked in curiosity. She digs a hard candy out of her collection, one she knows she won't like so not a huge loss, and hands it over. The new kid turns it over in their hands, not seeming to know what to do with it. "You eat it," she instructs, feeling for all the world like she'd stumbled upon an alien. The new kid catches the drift and peels the wrapper off of the hard candy to shove it under their mask. They freeze for a moment before excitedly hopping off the bench and getting in her face. She giggles and guards her bucket. "No, you can't take more of mine! You have to collect your own!"

The kid pauses and looks confused again, despite the mask not changing a bit. "Do you want me to show you?"

Slow nodding. Kelly beams at them and passes them their bucket. They hop back on the bench for just a moment, and the street light above seems to flash brighter for a moment before they hop back down, propping the handle of their bucket on the handle of their weird sword. She takes their hand and leads them off.

=0=

Irene is worried for her daughter. There's something very off about the new friend her daughter has made. Maybe it's the blank staring. Maybe it's the smell of buggy rot to them. Maybe it's the impossibly tiny hands and feet. Maybe it's simply the way the shadows seem to hug their back.

Whatever the case, Irene does not feel safe about Kelly's new little friend. The costume, she has to give the kid credit, is impressive. A little too impressive. She stops the children at the first house, and Kelly makes a show of instructing her friend on how to collect candy from the neighbors. They get quite a few pieces from their first few houses, and they keep trying to exchange weird, shiny rocks for the candy. Between houses, the mystery kid carries a weird little lantern filled with what looks like fireflies. They pass a bench at some point and the odd child stops them mid trek to sit on the bench. Their little lantern seems to grow a bit brighter, and they hop down immediately before Irene or Kelly can join them.

"Okay, I think that's enough trick-or-treating for tonight." Irene decides, and Kelly whines. "Where are your parents, sweetie?" she asks the mystery child.

Another blank stare. The kid digs in their cape and pulls out a weird, bug-shaped medal. The weird bug is wearing a crown. "I... see."

Weird kid.

"Should I take you to the police station? Are you lost?"

The kid shakes their head, pulling out a map and examining it. Irene looks over their shoulder to catch a glimpse of the map, and it looks like it's for a mining expedition, not for navigation. They circle a section of the map that trails off with a finger as if that's where they need to go. "I... see. Get home safely then, okay?"

The strange child nods. They dig again in their pockets and hand her a weird broach, shaped like another bug. Irene looks at it oddly, and the kid begins walking off without it. She... guesses it's a gift?

"... Let's go home, Kelly."

=0=

The kid is back at the bus stop the next morning. They're sleeping on the bench when Kelly gets there. She watches them jump awake as she approaches and there's a new crack in their mask that wasn't there last night. Their candy bucket sits on the bench next to them filled with the weird rocks, and they look like they were outside all night. She feels bad for them.

"Are you okay?" she asks her new friend. They look quickly at her, an urgency to their movements that wasn't there before. She thinks they're shaking. They nod quickly and hop off the bench, running off.

That's the last Kelly ever sees of her mysterious friend. Years down the line, she'd swear the kid was just a dream, even if her mother was witness to the odd, almost alien child.

Sometimes she wonders how they're doing, even if they probably weren't real. Sometimes she misses them.

Sometimes she swears she sees them in the shadows.


End file.
